Editor’s Note: Seth Moreida recently interviewed Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights, who explains in the first part of this series his criticism of Israel’s conduct of last year’s Gaza War. In the second part of this series, Moreida will provide a contrary perspective. Moreida is majoring in political science and international relations and is reporting from Israel this summer for San Diego Jewish World.
-First of two parts-
By Seth Moreida
Moreida, a student at Tufts University, was on assignment this summer in Jerusalem. This article was revised and updated August 13.
JERUSALEM—Rabbi Arik Ascherman is the director of the Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), an organization that focuses on protecting the human rights of both Jews and non-Jews who live in areas that are under Israeli control, including those living in Judea and Samaria.
To make peace with its neighbors or not to make peace with its neighbors?
Ascherman says many of the current threats facing Israel in the Middle East emanate from the absence of a resolution to the Israeli-Arab conflict. He says that if Israel reached a peace agreement with its Arab neighbors, it would “reduce the threat of aggression against her.” He makes note of the fact that while there are portions of the Arab populations in Gaza and Judea and Samaria that altogether reject the existence of the state of Israel, he makes it clear that this is just one subgroup of that population. He stated that it is completely in Israel’s capability to bring about peace with its Arab neighbors via negotiations. Despite the difficulties that Ascherman acknowledges are involved in reaching a deal with the Palestinian Authority, he claims that Israel’s overwhelming economic, military, and political power gives it the ability to actually accept and institute an agreement. Israel, he claims, has had the ability to shape events in the region in a way that the Palestinians cannot; Ascherman says that Israel has not done what it is capable of doing to create a lasting peace. For example, he says that Israel should agree to cease settlement construction in order to keep negotiations with the PA continuing and should not insist that the PA recognize Israel as Jewish state. He also says that he accepts the interpretation of international law that claims it is illegal for Israel to build settlements beyond the 1967 border. He adds that it is nearly impossible for the Palestinians to negotiate while Jewish settlements are being built in the West Bank.
He acknowledges that there are many things that could go wrong after an agreement is reached. However, he emphasizes that Israel’s willingness to negotiate with Palestinians will strengthen its image in the international community and decrease the probability of war breaking out in the region. Even if a peace agreement is not agreed upon, Ascherman believes that Israel’s showing a genuine willingness to achieve a peace agreement would strengthen its international standing.
He says that an Israeli investigation independent of the army should be asking whether the war could have been avoided altogether. Israeli actions, he claims, may have made the war more likely. For example, he cites the IDF’s using the kidnapped yeshiva students as an excuse to weaken Hamas presence in Judea and Samaria. Nevertheless, he expresses that it is quite possible that Hamas would have taken violent action against Israel even if Israel had not done the search.
Also, his organization identifies what it considers to be the increased stringency of the Israeli blockade of Gaza just before Hamas began firing rockets as one of the primary causes of the summer’s conflict. The organization says that it believes that the blockade goes beyond maintaining the security needs of Israel to actually inflicting unnecessary Gazan suffering that is not justified for military purposes. While he acknowledges that imports to Gaza are complex and potentially extremely dangerous, he told me multiple times that the limits on Gazan exports are unjust and should be ended.
Determining whether Israel utilized more force than was necessary to defend herself
The organization supports Israel’s right to defend itself against forces threatening her. In fact, Ascherman mentioned the traditional Jewish ideas that one has the right to kill someone that is coming to kill him and that one has the obligation to kill someone who is about to commit murder, if there is no other way to prevent bloodshed. Despite these facts, RHR cites that the author of the Purity of Arms section of the IDF ethical code said after the first Gaza war that the IDF is not fully upholding the Purity of Arms principle, which the IDF claims to abide by. The Purity of Arms principle is the idea that an army uses the minimum amount of force that is needed to accomplish its mission and makes great efforts to avoid harming noncombatants. Rabbis for Human Rights asks whether Israel’s actions in Operation Protective Edge in the 2014 Gaza War were immoral and resulted in a greater quantity of Gazan civilian casualties than was necessary to safeguard the security of the State of Israel and its citizens. Ascherman said, “It is almost inconceivable to me that with all our superior military technology, such high [Gazan] civilian casualties are justified.”
Ascherman says that, in many instances, the roof-knocking, leaflets, text messages, and voicemails used by the IDF to warn Gazans to leave areas that were being targeted were not sufficient to justify Israeli attacks against Hamas terrorists in populated areas of Gaza. For example, he says that that there were too many dangers and obstacles outside in the immediate vicinity for residents to be expected to leave their homes after receiving voicemails on their phones. Of course, Ascherman is not stating that Israeli strikes in populated areas of Gaza were always wrong; rather, he is stating that international law cites the principle of proportionality. There must be evidence that there will be a significant military objective gained by a military strike to warrant the attack. Furthermore, Ascherman notes the Talmud’s teaching that one can not kill an innocent person, even to save one’s self. He claims that killing civilians when there is no immediate threat to Israeli lives is wrong and that simply using these precautionary measures is not enough to warrant any attack.
Encouraging humanitarian restraint
Ascherman determines whether a military action is legitimate based on a few central principles. First, he says that if it is possible for a country to keep its citizens safe by diplomatic means and to avoid a military conflict that will harm enemy civilians, then it should do so. The second is whether a country’s intended strategy would be effective. He makes note of the actions of the IDF during the Second Intifada, when it demolished terrorists’ homes. He says, “If it could be shown that demolishing homes reduced terrorism, then we should do it. [However] the Israeli army came out with a study that shows that it actually increases terrorism. If something does not accomplish something, it should not be done.” The third principle is that a military action should only be taken once it has been absolutely determined that there not any less harmful way of bringing about the same effect. He said that Israel is not currently abiding by these principles.
Again, Ascherman believes that an Israeli investigation should look into whether these principles were being observed. Had these principles been implemented, he believes that “the number of noncombatant casualties should have been largely and seriously reduced but couldn’t have been entirely eliminated.” When killing an enemy combatant requires killing nearby civilians, Ascherman expects IDF soldiers to maintain the traditional IDF principle of Purity of Arms by putting their own lives in grave danger by refraining from killing the enemy combatant. As he says, sometimes IDF strategies should be chosen “even if [they] lead to greater Israeli casualties.”
Ascherman notes that this is an extremely difficult moral dilemma. He says that a principle that will result in greater Israeli casualties is not an easy one to implement and that he respects that others have other opinions on this issue that he considers to be valid.
He suspects that Israel intentionally used a disproportionate amount of force relative to the threat it was faced with. Ascherman says that he is concerned that the IDF may have acted under the “Dehiya Doctrine,” which is the idea that the only way to deter Israel’s enemies is by using disproportionate amounts of violence against one’s enemies. He mentions one example, when the IDF attacked the Abu-Jame family in Gaza. The result was 25 members of one extended family and a guest killed. As far as Ascherman says he is aware, the house was bombed because Ahmad Suliman Sahmoud, a member of Hamas’ military wing, was there. Since Sahmoud was not posing an immediate threat to Israelis, RHR claims that, if there are no other facts they are not aware of, the IDF should not have attacked approximately 50 Gazan civilians in order to kill him.
Another example of what Ascherman cites as being a disproportionate Israeli response was the IDF’s killing more than tens of Gazan civilians in order to prevent Hamas from getting away with Hadar Goldin (either alive or dead) in Rafiah. This is an example of the Hannibal Procedure, and it is one of the two instances where Ascherman is most certain that the IDF did act unjustly; however, he says that he is open to the fact that perhaps there is more information regarding this situation than is available to him, and thus, he concedes the possibility that the IDF did not act unjustly.
He notes that it appears to him that the IDF struck too many homes where, although there may have been weapons stockpiles, there were not immediate threats to Israeli soldiers or civilians there. He draws a clear distinction between when a terrorist is currently firing at Israeli soldiers or launching rockets into Israel and when the terrorist is not; only if they are posing a threat to Israelis at that very moment can there be a possible moral argument justifying the IDF killing the terrorists and striking at civilians surrounding them. Ascherman notes that while not killing a terrorist when the opportunity presents itself may mean that the terrorist may kill IDF soldiers later, he says that that “is hypothetical and we may have a chance to kill him later and avoid killing civilians.”
However, even if a Hamas terrorist is firing at Israelis, if Iron Dome is protecting the Israelis and there are many Gazan civilians around that would be killed alongside the terrorist, Ascherman says it is possible that he still does not consider it moral for the IDF to kill the terrorist.
Rabbis for Human Rights says that there needs to be an investigation performed by a nongovernmental Israeli body to determine whether “there was an attempt to cause so much destruction in Gaza that [Hamas] wouldn’t dare to attack us again or to [encourage Gazans to] rise up against Hamas.” This investigation would also determine whether Israel intentionally targeted civilians in areas where the IDF knew there were no terrorists or military infrastructure. He claims that neither the United Nations Human Rights Commission nor the Israeli government can be trusted to be impartial when reviewing the actions committed last summer.
In addition to just examining whether Israel broke laws of war and committed human rights abuses, Ascherman wishes that any future investigation utilize the tools available to it to answer the much more difficult question of whether the IDF’s actions were moral and just. Ascherman says that it is very possible that there could have been Israeli actions last summer that are not officially recognized as war crimes but that nevertheless were simply not the ethical thing to do. Ascherman does not think it is acceptable for Israeli lawyers to defend the activities of the IDF by allowing any and all actions that are in the “gray area” to be excused under the pretense that they were necessary for national defense. Ascherman expresses that Israel’s superior capabilities also brings with it heightened responsibility.
Final word from RHR
Rabbis for Human Rights wishes to see fewer casualties on the Gazan side and suggests that Israel may share responsibility both for causing the war and for the war’s escalation and intensity. It does not deny Hamas’ inhumane and criminal tactics, but it stands firm on the idea that Israel has options that it can utilize that will allow it to defend her people while killing fewer civilians. Ascherman puts in place a series of ideas which he said may be implemented to both prevent future conflicts and protect Israeli and Gazan civilians alike.
Ascherman says that he understands that calling on Israel to obey international law and limit itself to ethical conduct when its enemies do not may seem as though he is calling on Israel to “tie its hands behind its back.” However, he remains optimistic that there are ways in which Israel can defend herself and her citizens while acting in a just and moral way. Ultimately, he said, upholding Jewish values and international law will strengthen the state of Israel, not weaken it.
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Moreida is a student of political science and international relations at Tufts University. He reported in Jerusalem over the summer for San Diego Jewish World. This article was revised on August 14, 2015.